With the matter of starvation and the dubious aim of the virus (its target may be to cancel mankind according to some theories), how do you think the hive manages procreation? I think at least for now they would avoid it to keep the load on food resources as low as possible. What’s your take?
I think it depends on what their ultimate goal is.
At the moment the only goal were aware of is infecting everyone not currently infected. That could possibly take a long enough time that the hive would need to reproduce.
A secondary task we’ve seen is serving those not part of the hive. But it doesn’t seem like they need to do this. So if they all die off, that’s fine.
I do think it’s not something that will come up anytime soon. We’re only 10 days removed from almost everyone joining the hive, so we likely have more people than we’ll need for a while.
Plus, as you noted, food is a problem currently. I think for very small populations the hive could probably survive under their rules. Especially if the uninfected do the tasks the infected can’t. The hive can only eat apples that have fallen, but an uninfected could pick the apples for them.